An eloquent tale about real-life people with difficult problems.
A Massachusetts landlady befriends a tenant’s feisty daughter as they both unravel painful family secrets in this debut novel.
At the age of 72, Lena Barzetti has settled into a comfortable routine in 1999 as the longtime co-owner of a property company in Cambridge. She still goes into the office a few times a week, searches for vacant buildings to buy, and doesn’t get mixed up in other people’s business. A wild young girl arrives on the scene in the form of Kalayla Leeroyce, a biracial, green-eyed spitfire with an outrageously smart mouth. Lena discovers the girl lives with her mother, Maureen, in the same apartment building as she does, right across the hall. Knowing Maureen doesn’t have much money or free time, Lena tries to help Kalayla, including giving her a book with a black girl on the cover. Kalayla is hardly impressed and ruefully notes: “Tomorrow she’d probably be bringing me a book about a white girl ’cause my mama was white.” But she warms up to Lena and her home cooking and suggestions about activities. Kalayla’s father is dead and Maureen has told her that her own family, the O’Rourkes, died in a gas leak. As that story slowly falls apart, Kalayla has to confront painful realities about interracial marriages and their effects in the present day. Similarly, Lena has dealt with loss for decades, including two sons killed in Vietnam and one who disappeared after moving “out West.” Her abusive husband, Joey, is dead, but the bad memories persist, and she longs to find her missing son. Lena, Kalayla, and Maureen live in an old school, rough-and-tumble world, but there is also kindness, which they cling to as they confront the pasts they’ve tried to bury. Nicholas’ carefully layered novel excels at creating lifelike families with complicated, even sordid histories that touch on complex social problems. Marriages can be for business relationships; violence is a fact of life; and people can die young. The way that the author weaves in the memories with the present-day story is skillfully done and lends a good deal of authenticity to the characters. But the book can be slow going at times, and the middle section tends to drag. A more concise writing style would have strengthened the vivid journey toward the fully realized conclusion.
An eloquent tale about real-life people with difficult problems.Pub Date: June 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-578-49075-5
Page Count: 293
Publisher: Nurturing Light
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The novelist loves this land and these characters, with their enduring values amid a way of life that seems to be dying.
A heartland novel that evokes the possibility of everyday miracles.
The third novel by Wisconsin author Butler (Beneath the Bonfire, 2015, etc.) shows that he knows this terrain inside out, in terms of tone and theme as well as geography. Nothing much happens in this small town in western Wisconsin, not far from the river that serves as the border with Minnesota, which attracts some tourism in the summer but otherwise seems to exist outside of time. The seasons change, but any other changes are probably for the worse—local businesses can’t survive the competition of big-box stores, local kids move elsewhere when they grow up, local churches see their congregations dwindle. Sixty-five-year-old Lyle Hovde and his wife, Peg, have lived here all their lives; they were married in the same church where he was baptized and where he’s sure his funeral will be. His friends have been friends since boyhood; he had the same job at an appliance store where he fixed what they sold until the store closed. Then he retired, or semiretired, as he found a new routine as the only employee at an apple orchard, where the aging owners are less concerned with making money than with being good stewards of the Earth. The novel is like a favorite flannel shirt, relaxed and comfortable, well-crafted even as it deals with issues of life and death, faith and doubt that Lyle somehow takes in stride. He and Peg lost their only child when he was just a few months old, a tragedy which shook his faith even as he maintained his rituals. He and Peg subsequently adopted a baby daughter, Shiloh, through what might seem in retrospect like a miracle (it certainly didn’t seem to involve any of the complications and paperwork that adoptions typically involve). Shiloh was a rebellious child who left as soon as she could and has now returned home with her 5-year-old son, Isaac. Grandparenting gives Lyle another chance to experience what he missed with his own son, yet drama ensues when Shiloh falls for a charismatic evangelist who might be a cult leader (and he’s a stranger to these parts, so he can’t be much good). Though the plot builds toward a dramatic climax, it ends with more of a quiet epiphany.
The novelist loves this land and these characters, with their enduring values amid a way of life that seems to be dying.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-246971-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
IN THE NEWS
Very slow off the mark, though once blackmail and murder enter the picture, Scottoline moves things along with her customary...
In Scottoline’s latest family-centered thriller (Accused, 2013, etc.), Jake Buckman lets son Ryan drive the family car on a back road. Very bad idea.
The car hits someone, and she’s dead. Faced with the prospect of his teenager’s life being ruined, Jake tells him to get back in the car, and they drive away. “[D]on’t tell Mom,” Jake warns; he loves his wife, but Pam has the personality you’d expect of a superior court judge (judgmental), and their marriage is still recovering from Jake’s decision to start his own business, which has made him a mostly absentee husband and father. He’s now “one of the top-ten ranked financial planners in southeastern Pennsylvania,” though his planning skills aren’t evident as Jake ineptly tries to cover their tracks. He also has a terrible time keeping his son from confessing once they learn that the dead girl is Ryan’s high school classmate Kathleen Lindstrom. It takes more than 100 pages for the plot to involve anything other than Jake’s nerves, Pam’s suspicions and Ryan’s guilty wails, all of which are believable but not very interesting. Sleazy blackmailer Lewis Deaner livens things up, especially after he turns up murdered. If the police find those cellphone pictures Deaner had of Jake and Ryan at the scene of the crime, Jake will be a suspect. And once Ryan has blurted out the truth to his mother, furious Pam might be just as happy to see Jake in jail. The killer’s identity isn’t much of a surprise, since he’s the only character with any individual traits apart from the Buckmans and the cops, but the final twist comes out of nowhere, 10 pages from the end.
Very slow off the mark, though once blackmail and murder enter the picture, Scottoline moves things along with her customary professionalism, if scant credibility.Pub Date: April 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-01009-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
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